This is an anthropological study of a rural Maternal-Child Health and Family Planning (MCH-FP) project and the community in which it worked, in Bangladesh. It analyses the Non-Government Organisation's (NGO's) approach to rural community-based health care and integrated development, using the health programme as a framework. Beginning with an examination of the NGO's relationships with its donor-funding and technical support organisations, it moves on to a critique of population policy from a socio-cultural perspective, focusing on issues of gender and poverty. The main conclusions call for an expansion of the MCH agenda to adopt a more holistic perspective on the social context of women's health. This involves recognising the role of men in women's health care and actively including them in programmes. It also necessitates recognising the heterogeneity of female needs, beyond those of the conventional MCH reproductory focus, and the recognition of domestic violence as a significant cause of female morbidity and mortality. The principal conclusion is, therefore, the need for a gender perspective in the formulation of health policy and the design and implementation of health programmes, and more active participation in these processes, not only of women, but all members of the community, particularly men and influential leaders. Finally, a comparison is made between the ethnography of this and other anthropological works on Bangladesh, placing the study in the context of existing literature.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:649869 |
| Date | January 1995 |
| Creators | Ebdon, Rosamund |
| Publisher | University of Edinburgh |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://hdl.handle.net/1842/20492 |
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